


A Prayer in Perfect Piety

by MorghulilareJaes



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 13:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19210510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorghulilareJaes/pseuds/MorghulilareJaes
Summary: “I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains; I invented a brighter flame for myself.”― Friedrich Nietzsche





	A Prayer in Perfect Piety

Pain was all she could conceive of, so all-consuming that her mortal brain destroyed all memory of it even as it occurred. She drowned in an ocean of it, tossed about like a piece of flotsam on an unceasing sea. Grasping desperately at the edges of reality she could find no purchase, no sense of who she was or how long existing had been like this. Darkness began to give way like swimming up from the depths of unconsciousness. Green. Reality was Green, and it was broken and angry. She clung to this fact. It was revolutionary after so long in crushing oblivion. She dug her fingernails into the fabric of it and demanded that Reality make Sense. Green gave way to fire, chaos.

 

Massive chunks of earth and stone were hurtling through the sky and she thought that this must be what it is like to see dragons flying overhead. It came with the same certainty of imminent death. The ground was pressed hard against her face. She peeled herself away from it, rising to her feet like a marionette called back to life. Her lips tasted like ash and there was an unsettling smell of methane in the air. She shook herself out, dislodging the last tendrils of darkness from her mind. The sky had been torn open like a gaping wound that was steadily bleeding out across the landscape in long streams of green light. Where ever they touched the ground cracked and splintered apart. She squinted to see movement amongst the rubble. Strange, twisted things were clawing their way through the chaos. A jumble of body parts, human and not, heaved almost as one towards the same goal. They were rushing her. Distantly it clicked in her head that she should be terrified, that she should run, that these were Demons, after all, and they would surely kill her. But run to where? She glanced about. Even just turning her head took a monumental effort. The only clear path was towards the rift and it burned her eyes with light brighter than the sun. Instinct told her to avoid the light, to run the other way and take her chances amongst the monsters.

 

No, she would not give up today. She set one foot in the right direction and found that even though the second step was easier, it still felt like she was running through molasses. It was all uphill work. Of course it was uphill. Such is life. She scrambled against the loose rocks and shale, a sense of urgency finally reaching her as the distorted screeches from behind came into earshot. A strange snagging feeling came from the palm of her right hand and she paused for a moment to find a bit of metal caught deep in the flesh there. A piece of a shattered sword? It was sharp enough to be. She pulled it out easily enough and realised only while watching the blood swell out that it should have hurt.

 

A thunderous crack from above jolted her attention back to the sky. The mountain she was struggling up reached almost to the lowest part of the tear. It was hard to judge distance on something so large but it seemed like she could almost reach out and touch it. The demons were gaining on her. There was too much ground left between her and her goal. She turned back downhill to watch her death chase her down. Blood dripped freely off her fingertips and she thought that it was not unpleasant, almost like a warm rain. Oh. Better to die when you have nothing left to give than to hold anything back. She raised her cut hand up and flexed her magic, feeling it catch and tug at the droplets, suspending them in the air like little pools of lyrium. She pulled the strings of magic tight and readied herself for the coming storm. Right before the wave broke against her there was a blinding flash and earth-shattering crash as a stream of golden light slammed into the ground just below her. The loose rocks gave way and she lurched backwards, throwing herself farther up the mountain and narrowly escaping the growing avalanche.

 

There, standing just below the summit was a golden figure. Even backlit by the rift it seemed to radiate light. It had one arm outstretched and she could feel the burnt indignity of the air around where the golden light had originated. She couldn't make out the figure's face but still she was certain that it was staring at her, tracking her desperate ascent. She was so close, barely a stone's throw from the summit when a great weight slammed into her back and pinned her into the dirt. Horrible clicking and hissing and the unmistakable putrid smell of spider bile overwhelmed her. She squirmed against its weight and, with no space to properly direct the magic, she thrust her open palm against the thing's hairy underbelly and let loose a wild burst of lightning. The spider was sent hurtling back down the mountain in pieces but the wetness under her shirt told her the lightning had cut a nasty path across her body on its way to the ground. That also should have hurt. A lot.

 

A golden hand grasped her shoulder and hauled her to her feet. The figure shoved her bodily towards to rift, shouting something unintelligible. It was a woman's voice, she thought as she heaved herself up the last few steps. There was nowhere to go but up. She reached her good hand out towards the light. There were shapes moving behind it now. Was that a broken tower she could see? There was no time to second guess. She touched the rift and brilliant light crackled through her hand and down her arm. It felt like a hundred little hooks caught on her insides and wrenched her upwards, through, and out.

 

Her body slammed into the snow and into agony at the same time. The pain in her cut hand, the burns from her magic, the ache in her muscles, it was all a footnote her body made at the bottom of the novella it wrote about the searing, shattering pain in her left hand. She barely had time to see how the green light had infected her before she sank into glorious unconsciousness.


End file.
